(Brian’s POV)

Considering the last planned dinner at the Lindsays’—with all the Army brats and everyone else—was the next day, I sat nervously in my seat, waiting for Angel to arrive. But I also noticed Zac and Grace were missing too.

Maybe something good happened between them, which caused Zac and Grace to break up—considering they weren’t together, I now change that “break up” to…a fight like Joey and Meghan, causing them to split maybe?

My worrying stopped when Angel came in with a smile that hid any emotion other than happiness, oh so, well. She sat down next to me and I paused.

Where’s Zac?

“Grace just texted me; she said we can start without her,” Nelly informed. Immediately, everyone started to eat the feast on the table, passing around dishes of food in the process. Where was Zac and Grace?

(Grace’s POV)

I knocked on the door once before opening it with the key. I found Zac to be packing his clothes in his suitcase, perfectly folded like Military style.

“Why are you packing?” I asked him, sitting on the bed side his—which was Archer’s. I hadn’t seen or talked to him yesterday, so I didn’t know what happened—if anything at all.

“I’m going back to New York,” he answered. I stood up and walked over to where he was.

“What?” I asked. “We’re supposed to be here for another week longer.”

“Well now I’m not,” he shrugged.

“What happened?” I asked. He didn’t answer, so I closed his suitcase, slid it off the bed and had to throw him into the nearest wall. “What happened?”

“Angel’s pissed at the people who care about her most, because of me,” he said. For once, I didn’t see the soulless eyes that I had any other time. They were full of care and some sort of frustration. “She doesn’t want me here and I don’t want to be here.”

“She’s just one person—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he huffed before pushing me away from him and picking up his suitcase that had now-wrinkled clothes falling out. “I’m leaving to make things right between me and her, alright?”

I was the one to tell him that if something was meant to be, then so be it…but of course I told him this back when he first got to the base. I honestly thought he loved her considering all the times he got caught in basic training for sneaking phone calls after curfew—which, little did I know, weren’t to Angel—and how he talked about her the first time. By now, nothing had happened and I considered it hopeless. Apparently not for him.

“Making it right, would be staying here to make her deal with it and—”

“Your ‘right’ and my ‘right’ are different when it comes to her,” he interrupted.

She broke your heart, so you should make her suffer. That’s it. Done deal. The right thing to do would be to do the same, obviously. But when I looked at his eyes and his stature, it was obvious now that he still cared for her. Then, something was wrong…

“What’s the real reason nothing worked?” I asked him suddenly. He paused and then made slower movements as he re-packed his stuff. He didn’t answer. “The first time I heard about her, I told you that you should write to her because she must love you back and all that sh!t and then I saw you writing all the time with no letters in return…”

That’s why I partially hated her. He risked so much for her, and he didn’t get anything in return. She broke his heart for absolutely no reason…well at least that’s what I assumed.

“What really happened, Tyler?” I demanded. “Tell me.”

He turned to me over his shoulder.

“You’re right, I wrote,” he started. “But the only one that I actually sent was the one saying that I needed to stay away from her so I wasn’t revolving around her and I could live on my life.”

I smacked him hard.

“What the fu** is your problem!?” I yelled.

“I thought it was right at the time,” he reasoned.

“Yeah. At the time,” I quoted, rolling my eyes and hitting him once more. Maybe that’s why there was so much tension between them. Also, why she didn’t look at him as lovingly as someone like her should.

“Whatever,” he muttered, zipping up his suitcase.

“When do you leave?” I asked him.

“Right now,” he answered, immediately. “So if I don’t see you before your leave…” he kissed my cheek. “Stay in touch and be safe.”

“I always am,” I said a little bit shocked right now. He was impulsive. It was both a good and bad quality. He tried to produce a smile at me and then started to leave. He was good at hiding things; emotions, details…probably secrets. That’s probably why I liked him, because I could do the same d4mn thing.

***

“Where’s Zac?” Mia asked with a smile as I finally made it to our last dinner all together. Within the week, we were all leaving at different times.

“He left,” I said, taking a bite of steak.

“Where to?” Archer laughed.

“New York,” I said as if no big deal. Everyone got silent.

“Why’d he leave?” Brian asked.

“He thought it was the right thing to do,” I quoted to him and gave Angel a look, but her head was down towards the table—as if she knew it was his fault for leaving. And all I was doing was glaring at her, seeing as her face twitched into composure of some sort of pain. I saw her shift in her seat as she kept it to herself and the conversation picked up when Archer made some comment about maybe Zac could be pranking their room as we speak.

Towards the end of dinner, I was in the bathroom—in the process of leaving and such—when someone barged in and went straight to the toilet to puke. Angel. Of course. This time I knew it wasn’t “food poisoning”. She had a tendency to run off all the time apparently…from what I’ve seen.

“Do you have anorexia or something?” I asked her, repulsed as she sat against the shower’s door.

“No,” she spoke with her eyes closed. “I don’t know what happened…”

“Angel,” Brian breathed at the door, clinging onto the frame as a break from his running. He rushed right over and threw an arm around Angel’s waist to help her up.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” Angel muttered, just as stubborn as Zac right then. Brian released her a bit.

“Time for you to go home,” Brian said to her.

“And what am I supposed to tell the others?!” I piped up. He stopped walking and looked back to me.

“I don’t really care. I’m sure you’ll come up with something,” he shrugged. “She’s obviously sick.”

“I’m not sick!” Angel voiced, pushing him away lightly. “My head just hurts…”

Her being sick like this was nature’s way of revenge on her. Her head hurt while Zac’s heart hurt. Only, she didn’t deserve that penalty because it was Zac who had broken his own heart. I painted some picture of Angel in my head of some dramatic, horrid girl and now all I saw was a seemingly-sick girl being aided by someone who loved her because she was the opposite of horrid and more of what her name described in a way. I had no reason to hate her. No reason.

“I’m fine,” Angel said.

“Angel, stop being stubborn—”

“No really. I’m fine,” she insisted. “It’s just like the last time…”

She stopped when she looked at me. It was as if looking at me sent the light bulb in her brain to go off. Immediately, she walked out of the bathroom, without Brian, in a hurry. And before he left, I surprised myself by chasing after her.

“Angel!” I yelled. She had made it outside by the time I caught her. She ran fast for someone that was “sick” a couple minutes ago.

“What?” she asked, already typing something in her phone.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed.

“What for?” she asked, out of breath and holding the phone up to her ear.

“Being mad at you,” I answered. She put the phone down and looked to me as if what I said was exactly what she wanted to hear.

“I knew it…” Really?

“I didn’t mean it. I just thought that because of you, Zac was—”

“No worries; you’re forgiven,” she rushed. She looked down to her phone and then snapped it back up to her ear. “Joey! I have something important…you’re what? I can’t—”

“Angel, what the h3ll—?” Brian said in a whine once he got outside. Apparently the call was dropped because Angel strode over, grabbed his wrist and started towing him away to his car.

“We gotta go!” she said to him. I wonder what could possibly be so important to her.

“Does this mean you forgive me!?” I heard Brian ask as they were further down.

“No; just come with me!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: I'll just say this right now. I have...38 and a half chapters written for this story and I'm in a writer's block on how to lay out the plot that I want. So much, that I have started other stories just to take a break from this one, but I'll start to continue this one again when I figure it out.